18. If You Won’t Make Changes, That Employee Engagement Survey Is a Waste of Time

At Work with The Ready

No burying the lede this week: Employee engagement surveys are broken.

We expect them to tell us everything about a workplace’s culture—but they often miss the mark, capturing just a sliver of what's going on and usually only symptoms instead of underlying causes.

As leaders try to make sense of the data, there’s frequently a lot of smoke chasing, but nobody can tell where the fire is, or if there’s one at all. Add to that employee distrust around anonymity, spun-up initiatives to make changes that never go anywhere, and the fact that most surveys don’t even ask the right questions, and it’s no wonder everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline worker, suspects these surveys do more harm than good.

In this episode, Rodney and Sam explore what “engagement” actually means, what organizations should be measuring instead and why, and how to truly understand the health of your organization.

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Mentioned references:

• RACI episode: AWWTR Ep. 10
• performance management episode: BNW Ep. 56
• The Ready's OS Canvas
• "complication" vs "complexity"
• "state" vs "trait"
• Marcus Buckingham